Words: Alan Daly / Pics: Olga Kuzmenko (Olga Kuzmenko Photography)
Alan: Welcome to Ireland. It’s your first Irish show. First question: What the hell took you so long?
Lexxi: I wonder the same thing. I wish I would’ve come over here sooner. We went out last night and there are legendary bars and things like that. It’s a cool area. I don’t know why it took us so long. I guess management didn’t have us come over here, which is ridiculous. It’s not a very big place we’re playing tonight, and it sold out quick, so hopefully, we can come back and keep it going.
Alan: We know you’re on your Lower the Bar tour, but because tonight is your first time in Ireland, might you play some more of your back catalog than you might on the rest of the tour?
Lexxi: We’ll be pretty much doing the same thing for this whole run.
Alan: So you said you went out in Dublin last night. What did you get up to?
Lexxi: We went to some rock club. I forget what it was called, but the dude that was playing was great. It was just cool having a Guinness and fitting in with the Irish traditions. Eating fish and chips, and I never eat that.
Alan: Are there any other cities or shows on this current tour that you’re particularly looking forward to?
Lexxi: You know what? This is the biggest one for me, because we haven’t been here before, and there’s so much good history here. We’ve pretty much been everywhere else in Europe. Just being over here and out of America for a while is always great. We’re treated so well over here. And selling out so fast here is very humbling as well. We’ll be gone for a while and you do get homesick, being with three other dudes for as long as we are. But bringing heavy metal back is fun to do and meeting new people is a blast as well. We’re doing the best we can.
Alan: So what have you heard about Irish girls?
Lexxi: I didn’t hear much about Irish girls, but last night, they were beautiful. They were hot. And it’s so cold here, you’d think that penguins would live here, but there are beautiful women all over the place. We’re going to find out about Irish women tonight. We’re super excited about that.
Alan: Do you think you’ll get seventeen of them onstage?
Lexxi: Yeah, we are actually!
Alan: How do you get away with being so politically incorrect in this day and age?
Lexxi: That’s what’s fucking great about it! Everything is so… “You’ve got to be careful with everything nowadays”. Fuck that. Just have fun. Enjoy yourself, and have a laugh at something, whatever you choose to laugh at, and fucking dig heavy metal. That’s pretty much what we do. Now it’s even tougher with everything going on. You can never touch a girl’s vagina when she doesn’t want you to. But now there’s a lot of people that think you can do that.
Alan: Well, if the president of the United States of America says you can do that…
Lexxi: All the time. My god, if he can grab you like a bowling ball, then… Exactly. It’s ridiculous.
Alan: Have you ever been approached or threatened with legal action for name-dropping celebrities in your lyrics?
Lexxi: You know what, nothing’s happened. Nobody did anything or said anything to us. A lot of people don’t like us, but who cares? We have enough people that do, so we’re fine with that. If you’re in the middle, it sucks, nobody’s going to know who you are. You’ve got to be in one pool or the other.
Alan: A lot of your humor is ostensibly misogynistic, but there’s a lot of self-deprecating undertones.
Lexxi: Sure, exactly.
Alan: I’d like you to rate the Steel Panther albums from best to least-best.
Lexxi: That’s so tough for me to do. Introducing the world to Steel Panther, when Feel the Steel came out, it was so cool because it was the first time we got that reaction of people enjoying us. The first album is always really cool, but then the more albums that come out, it’s so tough. Every time a new album comes out, that becomes your new favorite album because the songs are different. It could be the same crowd and sometimes you win over new people that record. Satchel has been writing so much. We’re already writing for another record, so that’s fantastic as well. The more we tour, the more we have experienced and give Satchel that opportunity to write. But I have to say this record right now is my favorite record. But Balls Out was my favorite when it came out. And All You Can Eat was my favorite record when that came out. You might have better luck asking somebody else in the band that question.
Alan: If I pushed you to, name your top two?
Lexxi: Maybe Lower the Bar and Balls Out. But there was so much on All You Can Eat as well.
Alan: You mentioned writing new material. A lot of Steel Panther’s lyrics are witty, they’re clever, they’re offensive. It must get harder and harder to come up new ideas on each album.
Lexxi: Well, that’s all Satchel. I don’t know how he does it. He blows my mind every time. The experiences that he has, that’s where he comes up these ideas for the songs.
Alan: So they’re all based on true stories?
Lexxi: For the most part, yeah! Michael was working at a pizza place and there was a gang bang at the old folks’ home one time. Tiger Woods is definitely a true experience. Satchel comes up with ideas and we’ll go in the studio and talk about changing some lyrics around or whatever, but for the most part, Satchel has a really good idea of what he wants to relay.
Alan: So is seventeen really an exaggeration?
Lexxi: I don’t know. In a row is tough, but there was a time where there was a crazy couple of days, let’s say that, but there may be a little bit of exaggeration.
Alan: I presume you’ve heard of the Readers’ Wives sections of gentlemen’s magazines.
Lexxi: Oh yeah, of course.
Alan: So some of our MyGlobalMind readers from Ireland have sent us some photos of their wives that they would like Steel Panther to look at any rate.
Lexxi: This is fantastic.
Alan: Let’s see if you can pronounce their names. They are real Irish girls names and place names. Here’s the first one:
Lexxi: Sibe-he-an from Muff, County Done-gal. Wow. Look at that. Those aren’t panties. Those are underwear!
Alan: How about this next one:
Lexxi: A-oh-fee from Spunkane. Ok, I got that. From County Kerry. These are all real places in Ireland, correct? These are just fantastic! Is it the same lady?
Alan: I don’t think so. And here’s the last one:
Lexxi: Sad-hib from Blueball, County Off-lay. How do you say that name?
Alan: Like Sive. Try to rhyme it with Jive.
Lexxi: How old is this fucking picture? She’s got to be 90 now right? Look at that shit in the background. Wow. I think these two (Siobhan and Aoife) are the same fucking chick.
Alan: So which one would you consider the foxiest?
Lexxi: Oh this one for sure (Sadhbh). Now if you asked Stix, he might choose differently.
Alan: Moving onto a much more serious topic, I wanted to talk to you about the Polish band Decapitated who spent several months in prison in the U.S. Accused of allegedly gang-raping a girl on their tour bus. They’ve since been released without charge. Would the story make you worried about who you bring onto your tour bus?
Lexxi: We love women. It’s always going to be their choice if they want to be on the tour bus. Usually, we’re trying to get them off the tour bus. That would never happen. Especially in my situation. We’ve been fortunate enough that we don’t really need to do that to women. It’s been easy enough to have them choose us. Because we’re old. If the balls come to us, we’ll get it, but we’re not going to dive.
Alan: We don’t know exactly what happened on that tour bus. Maybe something happened that was consensual, and then the girl in question twisted the truth. Who knows?
Lexxi: 100%. You always need to be careful about things like that. Especially now for sure.
Alan: We’re being asked to wrap it up, so one or two quick final questions. The last time I saw you play was from Metallica’s Snake Pit at the Download festival in 2012, and that was a great show. Do you have any European Summer festivals lined up this year?
Lexxi: I believe we do. At the end of June. We just got all our tour dates in this past week.
Alan: Any other plans for the rest of 2018?
Lexxi: We have some festival tours lined up and we do hope to come back to Ireland for sure. Especially selling out as fast as we did. We hope we could do better numbers next time we’re here. We’ve had a good experience here so far.
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